I Happen to Like New York

On the counter of the convenience store sat two items: a bottle opener, and tube of Neosporin. 

As any reader of detective fiction knows, objects can tell stories just as well as words (and with much less dithering).  These items most assuredly told a story: a tale of imprudence and woe.  A tale of liquor and high spirits.  A tale involving Greg’s inability to get through Earth Girls Are Easy without being at least slightly drunk.  A tale involving our lack of the proper tool to access said liquor, and our misguided (but enthusiastic) plan to go at the bottle caps with bare hands.

A tale about New York.

&

We ate breakfast in a Hungarian coffeeshop, then walked across the street to the world’s largest cathedral.

We saw Phantom of the Opera on Broadway, and the Upright Citizens Brigade improv troupe on West 26th.

We randomly stumbled upon the Jewish deli where Jerry and the gang schmooze in Seinfeld, and almost collided with the comedian Louis C.K. outside the David Letterman Theater.

We had gelato in Greenwich Village, and margaritas at Harry’s Burritos.

Here are the only generalizations I’ll make about New York: it was a town of friendly strangers, surprising restaurants, amazing public transportation, a careful respect for diversity, and a delightful variety of bookstores.  Carmen and I got to drag Greg to half a dozen bookstores; Greg, in recompense, was perfectly happy dragging the two of us across the city on a quest for the perfect cookie.

Greg and I flew in separately (so I only know this by hearsay)—but, as his plane began to circle down, the businessman at his side whispered, “F*** you, New York!”

I must say, sir, I disagree.

            It was hot as blazes, though.  It was August; we would have been fools to expect any different.  We stayed with Carmen in her thick-walled apartment in the Bronx.  Each night, I was faced with a brooding question: should I leave the windows open and get bitten everywhere by mosquitoes—or close them, and wake up at six am., parched and exhausted and wonky with sweat?

Defeated by humidity, surrendering to our need for air conditioning, we ended up getting a hotel room for a few nights.  The inn was in a nice, leafy location near Central Park and the Natural History Museum—but the room was so tiny that the only place to sit, beside the bed, was the toilet.  I felt as if we’d chugged Alice’s “Drink Me” potion and were rapidly becoming too large for the furnishings.  Greg couldn’t fit in the closet even by turning sideways.

Good old New York.

&

This is one of my favorite memories:

We were searching for someplace to eat breakfast (pushing our way through the sea of tourists in Times Square), when we noticed a restaurant called The Starlight Diner.  “With Singing Wait-Staff!” it announced on its marquee.  Not knowing quite what to expect, we crossed the threshold—and were confronted with the aspect of a waiter with a microphone, running between the booths and belting out the song, “Shout!”

“What is this place?” I asked in hushed tones.

A man at a nearby table answered, “A heck of a good time.”

            “Hey-ey-yey-yey!” our waiter sang.

It turned out that the marquee had been blunt: there was in actuality, singing wait-staff.  We deduced that this was where the people who wanted to perform on Broadway started their careers.  As waiters and waitresses, they were fairly surly; but man—did they rock those solos. 

&

One afternoon when it was just Carmen and I, we were slumped on a bench in Washington Square Park, debating what to do with ourselves.  One of us finally admitted, “Well, I think we have to go to Coney Island.”

The idea had been put into our heads in the subway—there were posters everywhere declaring, “The fun is back!” above montages of roller coasters.  With the impetuousness of true adventurers, we set out. 

Public transportation in New York is astoundingly accessible—especially compared to L.A., where 60% of the real estate is devoted, in one manner or another, to private automobiles (if you’ll forgive a conceit, to having the ability to get out of L.A.).   In New York, trains screech underground.  Greg repeatedly compared the subway to teleportation.

It took us an hour to ride the subway to Coney Island.

            It took us about an hour to ascertain, staring at the mess of slipshod and unappealing carnival rides, that the fun was not back.

            But we stuck our feet in the Atlantic, and complimented each other on our guts and whimsy.

&

On our last Sunday before leaving, Carmen took Greg and me to Central Park.  We sat on boulders, watching a practice baseball game.  Bandstand music wafted from behind us on the hot breeze.  Before us were American elms, and above them rose the blue towers of the city.

I’ve never felt more proud to be from these United States. 

&

My town is a one-horse town (or its modern equivalent—it only had one stoplight for most of the time I was growing up).  I tell you this because knowing the perspective of a travel writer can help the reader understand what she notices, and what she’s forced to overlook.

            My town is a one-horse town in Northern California.  A small place.  A pit stop in the wine country.  New York, now: New York is so big that its bureaus have their own accents. 

I’m a compulsive note-taker.  While I was in New York, my pages stayed blank. 

Small places hold out moments of pure idiosyncrasy to the traveler--a stranger's smirk, a piece of graffiti, an abandoned CD.  It seemed as though the gigantic city, by contrast, didn’t allow anything so precise.  I was overwhelmed.  Pleased—but overwhelmed.  It wasn’t until I was sitting on a plane in Minneapolis, streams of water crossing the porthole window in zigzag paths, a mosquito bite on my finger slowly becoming infected, and lightning creaking the world outside, that my faculty of description came awake.

I’ve skirted around this post for two months, gathering up and sorting through my impressions.  In the end, all I can say is that I got a taste, this trip, of how New York can inspire passionate devotion.  I’ve been humming the words of a Cole Porter song while writing this:

“I happen to like New York; I happen to like this burg,

And when I have to give the world a last farewell,
And the undertaker starts to ring my funeral bell,
I don't want to go to heaven, don't want to go to hell.
I happen to like New York.”